“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.

Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn."

- Pastor Dave Barnhart at Saint Junia United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Alabama

Definition of sanctimonious
1: hypocritically pious or devout

other considerations;
https://www.vasectomy.com/article/vasectomy/procedure/no-needle-vasectomy or even https://www.parsemus.org/humanhealth/vasalgel/

https://youtu.be/25JyC5Whhvc

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/ben-franklin-american-instructor-textbook-abortion-recipe.html

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-americans-really-think-about-abortion/

remember the cute "my body my choice" covid 19 zinger?

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7047e1.htm#:~:text=Pregnant%20women%20are%20at%20increased,1%E2%80%933)

folks like yourself weren't against late, late term abortions. i.e. grandma/pa

also a DYK https://dirtysexyhistory.com/2016/07/28/ancient-birth-control-silphium-and-the-origin-of-the-heart-shape/

Don't appreciate it? Mate, they built their entire fooking social structure around it!

none of what you said makes any point showing why gun control shouldn't be discussed or implemented. and i specifically didn't say "a collection of gun laws/regulations". i said "a collection of laws/regulations/policies". there is a plethora of policies or lack thereof that are talked about often to deflect from the gun debate after [yet another] mass shooting but it's always lip service. the main deflection de jour is "mental health" but very little if anything is done about that. and the problem stems from way beyond guns and mental health. minimum wage laws, health care, education, income disparity/poverty, mental health care, gun laws, etc. all play big roles in an event like this. guns are obviously the first issue that needs to be looked at but because of the second amendment, there is never a real conversation about it. it's just shut down. all without even validating the justification for the second amendment to begin with. it's just presumed to be an axiom.

but even accepting that it is, move on to the next issue and it's the same thing: obstruction of any conversation or modernization. "oh we can't do that 'cause it costs money". well, all the data shows not doing it (investing in education, health care, poverty, etc) is many times more expensive than investing in it. across the board.

so now your whole country just sits there feeling bad for itself, wallowing in how fucked your social structures are, and passing the buck from one issue to the next until the news cycle forgets about one specific event effected by all these things and moves on to the next event effected by all these things but is aesthetically different and the whole process starts over again. meanwhile complaining about ineffective your political system is yet consistently voting in low numbers for the entrenched or the psychotic. certainly never for the thoughtful or nuanced. [i'm being hyperbolic here, but your politicians and voting record as a poplulation are fucking terrifying if not useless]



point being: watching this happen time and time and time again: the tragedy, the grief, the looking for answers, refusing to see the answers that are plain as day from the outside, pointing to the closest issue you aren't directly effected by, and finally forgetting the whole thing and/or accepting it as normal is really, truly sad and tragic.

just to add what @Asmo rightly pointed out,is that addictions are a symptom of internal and external forces.

when we consider the state of our society and it its inherent social structures,and we compare addiction rates and suicide rates,i feel there is sufficient evidence for concern.

just look at americas suicide rates.
http://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/

we can see a steady increase.
when we factor in military suicides,which have been averaging one,to up to 22 a day since 2009.the larger picture becomes incredibly disturbing.

my point,which is right with asmo,is that while one group kills themselves due to hopelessness,emotional stress or an inability to cope or adapt in these trying times.

the addict is doing the same thing,for the exact same reasons.just on a slower and more precipitous path of self-destruction.

when asked as a child what they wanted to be when they grow up.no child ever answered that their desire was to become an addict.

the "war" on drugs,
is a war on people.

and treating this as a legal/criminal problem is missing the point entirely.
this is a social issue,that can be treated by providing social solutions.

dr bruce alexander discovered some amazing results in rats you may find interesting @MilkmanDan:

http://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/rat-park/148-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park

I always had this opinion as I was going through the school system.
Hearing his rant, I realize that somewhere along the way, people realized the transient nature of human paradigms, like government and social structure, and decided to focus education on the constant factors of human existence: Math, Science, the world.
I can also justify education of history for allowing us to not repeat the mistakes the idiots before us made (though that's a hit or miss most of the time).
While I agree with his complaints, I'd rather not have an educational system that simply geared people for functioning in the current society. We're always fighting against the educational system from turning us into cogs in a machine as it is, but imagine if our schooling concerned itself primarily/solely with matters of state? We'd fully realize that nightmare of an assembly-line workforce.

Up until I saw my fellow countrymen (including many I respected) fawning like chimps at a tea party during that whole "jubilee" thing I might have agreed. There seems to be a huge cognitive dissonance for most people when it comes to the royals.

On the one hand most don't really take it very seriously, on the other many (maybe even most) appear to have a sub-conscious desire/need to submit to their natural betters. Our whole national identity is built on the myths of Kings and failed rebellions and I fear for many the Monarchy represents a kind of bizarre political security blanket. We claim to not really care but deep down I think many of us secretly fear loosing our mythical matriarch.

One might liken it to celebrity worship backed by 100's & 1000's of years of religious mythology. The Royal's aren't really human to us, they are more like some closely related parent species born to a life we could only dream of. I realise that when asked directly most people would consciously acknowledge that was silly, but most would also respond the same to say Christian sexual repression. They know sex and nakedness when considered rationally are nothing to be ashamed of, but they still continue to treat their own urges as somehow sinful when they do not fall within rigidly defined social parameters.

We still haven't gotten over such Judeo-Christian self policing because the social structures built up around it are still with us (even if we fool ourselves into thinking we are beyond the reach of such sub-conscious influences). I don't think we will ever get over our master-slave culture while class and unearned privilege are still built into the fabric of our society. Having a Royal family, no matter how symbolic, is the very living embodiment of this kind of backwards ideology.

It's like trying to quit heroin while locked in a room with a big bag of the stuff.

It's true to say most don't take the whole thing very seriously but that to me is almost as concerning. Most people when asked don't believe advertising has a significant effect on their psyche but Coke-a-cola still feels like spending about 3 billion a year on it is worthwhile. One of them is clearly mistaken!

Our royal family here, is to me working in the same way as coke's advertising. It's a focal point for a lot of sub-conscious concepts we are bombarded with our whole lives. Naturally there are many sides to this and it wouldn't work without heavy media manipulation, state indoctrination etc. but it's an intrinsic part of the coercive myth none the less. Monarch's, Emperors and wealthy Dynasties are all poisons to me. No matter the pragmatic details, the sub-conscious effect seems significant and cumulative.

"Dead" symbolisms IMHO can often be the most dangerous. At least one is consciously aware of the devils we see. No one is watching the one's we have forgotten.....

The above is reason enough for me but I have bog all better to do this aft so I'll dive into the rabbithole a bit.....

(We do very quickly start getting into conspiracy theory territory hare so I'll try to keep it as uncontroversial as I can.)

A. The UK is truly ruled by financial elites not political ones IMHO. "The city" says jump, Whitehall says how high. The Royal family being among the wealthiest landowners and investors in the world (let alone UK) presumably can exert the same kind of influence. Naturally this occurs behind closed doors, but when the ownership class puts it's foot down the government ignores them to their extreme detriment. (It's hard to argue with people who own your economy de-facto and can make or break your career)

B. The queen herself sits on the council on foreign relations & Bilderberg group and she was actually the chairwoman of the "committee of 300" for several years. (and that's not even starting on club of Rome, shares in Goldman Sachs etc.)

C. SIS the uk's intelligence services (MI5/6 etc.), which have been proven to on occasion operate without civilian oversight in the past, are sworn to the crown. This is always going to be a most contentious point as it's incredibly difficult to prove wrongdoings, but I have very strong suspicions based on various incidents (David Kelly, James Andanson, Jill Dando etc.), that if they wanted/needed you dead/threatened that would not be especially difficult to arrange.

D. Jimmy Saville. This one really is tin foil hat territory, but it's no secret he was close to the Royal family. I am of the opinion this is because he was a top level procurer of "things", for which I feel there is a great deal of evidence, but I can't expect people to just go along with that idea. However given the latest "paedogeddon" scandal involving a extremely high level abuse ring (cabinet members, mi5/6, bankers etc.) it certainly would come as little surprise to find royal family members involved.

Points A&B I would stand behind firmly. C&D are drifting into conjecture but still potentially relevant I feel.

But even if we ignore all of them, our culture is built from the ground up upon the idea of privilege of birth. That there are some people born better or more deserving than the rest of us. When I refer to symbolism this is what I mean. Obviously the buck does not stop with the monarchy, England is hopelessly stratified by class all the way through, but the royal family exemplify this to absurd extremes.

At best I feel this hopelessly distorts and corrupts our collective sense of identity on a sub-conscious level. At worst....Well you must have some idea now how paranoid I'm capable of being about the way the world is run. (Not that I necessarily believe it all wholeheartedly, but I'm open to the possibility and inclined to suggest it more likely than the mainstream narrative)


On a pragmatic note: Tourism would be fine without them I think, we still have the history and the castles and the soldiers with silly hats etc. And I think the palaces would make great hotels and museums. They make great zoo exhibits I agree, just maybe not let them continue to own half the zoo and bribe the zoo keepers?


Anyway much love as always. You responded with considered points which is always worthy of respect, regardless of whether I agree with it all.

So intelligent people never take risks or choose riskier lifestyles according to their own balance of self preservation and stimulation?

By that logic a truly smart person would only ever choose to live in a virtual bubble. There's basically no need to go outdoors for many people any more, so why would you risk it if you didn't have to?

What about all the idiots that drive cars!? Don't they know car's are dangerous? (waaaaaaaaaay more dangerous than an Alligator!)


Life is risky, in fact last time I checked it had a 100% mortality rate. Each of us has a (probably genetic) pre disposition towards a particular balance of risk and preservation. The diversity of this mix is VERY important to maintaining a healthy gene pool and social structure.

We need risk takers, they are the ones that forge ahead into new territory, test new & dangerous technologies and thrive performing essential tasks that the rest of us are too chicken shit to do like rescue people from burning buildings (or more trivially removing alligators from pools lol)


I would also like to point out that many a dumbass couple has produced genius children, just as many genius parents have produced dumbass children. Genetics are only half the story & intelligence in particular does not appear rigidly linked to your genetic history.

The nightmare Idiocracy scenario you are so worried about has a lot more to do with education than genealogy

You simply can't SEE a scenario without force, because you've drunk the Kool Aid, Stormsinger, we all have.

Anarcho-Capitalism sounds good in ether, eliminate the state's influence on yer shit. Hire private security firms to dole-out justice, and fuck the police. Sounds REAL good. Privatizing currency structures, anything goes. Sounds righteous and fair-Keeps out gangsters who will eventually become masters.

Eliminate compulsory taxation. Good thing. Ombudsman-like dispute resolution rather than laws and a punishment to follow. Sounds fucking SANE to me. Problem is , with all the robots programmed by the state for the past 100 years, it's kinna hard to convince idiots that something like this could work....to free them from the inevitability of the failure of the current paradigm. About the only problems I can see with a switch would be how to maintain environmental impact standards, but these problems' solutions would become evident when people become responsible for themselves, for another's well-being within the social structure, and their own destinies.

Democracy (the meaning, 'rule of the people') has been lost to the rule of a very few, and historically it never works for very long before assholes find a way around it.


You're in a pot of water being slowly heated, Stormsinger-Warm 'n cozy now, melting skin from your screaming carcass later.

@enoch

Well, note that the "governs best, governs least" quote IS Thoreau speaking, and although I think it's nonsense (I don't personally want to live completely outside any social structure, I don't think it's practical to separate myself from all of the advancements of society), I DO still think that Thoreau was a brave and noble person for believing in something and seeing that belief come to fruition. That's freedom.

But, when you're constantly putting down a system that you seem to wholeheartedly disagree with, but still support, that's hypocrisy, again, acc to me.

I brought up the issue of taxes because that's what Thoreau did. It's not terribly complicated. He felt that the system of government he was a part of was corrupt and restrictive, so he chose to not participate in it by not paying his taxes. He was jailed because of it, and when his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson bailed him out of jail he was upset. He WANTED to remain in jail because he didn't want to contribute to the social system he disagreed with so.

So when blankfist compared himself to Thoreau: http://videosift.com/talk/Gov-t-stopped-funding-charity-private-donations-surge-500#comment-1185054

I felt, and am reminded every time I see this type of propaganda, that there are a few ways of looking at this american libertarianism and those who follow it:

1) They don't believe in the government, but still support it through taxes.
2) They don't actually believe in the principles outlined in their own philosophy, and that's why they support what they affirm is a corrupt, freedom crushing, system, and that explains their support of it.
3) They believe in their ideas, but want to change things through the current system of government, which seems like a bit of a weird Catch 22.
or
4) They just want to have a theoretical discussion.

I've asked and asked, but he maintains that he's a freedom fighter who supports the government that he hates (through the payment of taxes, etc.)

There are other options I've probably considered along the way that aren't mentioned here, but I really put more thought into this than trying to tear blankfist down. It's genuinely confusing to me for someone to seemingly believe something so strongly and not act on those feelings.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. My first teaching job was in a very rural part of the US. Word got out quickly to the principal that I didn't say the pledge of allegiance in the morning (I have a variety of reasons for this, but the main one is that I am an atheist and don't agree with the phrase "under god"). I was brought into the principal's office after his stooge assistant "stopped by" my room several days in a row before and after the announcements. He wanted to know why I wasn't saying it and the conversation was respectful but went something like:

"Well, I choose not to, and I make sure everyone, including myself, is respectful during that time of the day, but I make it clear to the students that they don't have to as well."
"But don't you think you're setting a bad example for the students?"
"Well, no...? (at this point I knew they basically wanted me to just fall in)"

Long story short, at the end of the year, my job no longer existed. They moved the journalism teacher to another building and my position went from Eng teacher to Eng/Journalism teacher (I don't have a journalism license). Since I didn't have a license for that, I couldn't stay. :-/

It was hard to deal with, impossible to prove, but I'm better off 7 years into my career not being surrounded by those people anyway. They REALLY wanted me to just say the pledge, but it wasn't in my job description that I had to say the pledge every morning, and today, I'm happy to be in an inner city school with a more diverse and understanding population where I don't have to.

That's one BIG example from my life, and I'm no Thoreau, but neither is Blankfist. Now if he would just admit it.

It's the way the world was meant to be. Not this follow-the-leader-which-is-just-the-fuck-in-front-of-you-just-as-dumb-as-you BS. Patterning ourselves after our collective misjudgements and perpetuated fear-ignorance via meme-behavior in the form of social pressure; I see your comment of "Fuck-it", I instantly relate to you and your superior "boss" attitude. Thus agreement is unofficially created, and a thread of social structure formed.

Fuck you. Fuck everything. And love it. Good for her, indeed. Grow a beard or don't. What's the difference? I married a woman for her boobs. Does it matter if that's an acceptable attraction for a man? I'm also attracted to her large clitoris. It's like a weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee penis.

@alcom

I hear you shinyblurry, but I feel that your argument meanders back to the original appeal to authority that most believers resort to when justifying their positions. I also find that the related video links provided by TheGenk provide a valid refutation of the idea that God is The One who put values of good and evil inside each of us.

There is always an appeal to authority, either to God or to men. There are either objective moral values which are imposed by God, or morality is relative and determined by men. If morality is relative then there is no good or evil, and what is considered good today may be evil tomorrow. If it isn't absolutely wrong to murder indiscriminately, for instance, then if enough people agreed that it was right, it would be. Yet, this does not cohere with reality because we all know that murdering indiscriminately is absolutely wrong. The true test of a worldview is its coherence to reality and atheism is incoherent with our experience, whereas Christian theism describes it perfectly.

If you feel the videos provide a valid refutation, could you articulate the argument that they are using so we can discuss them here?

In my mind, Zacharias' incoherence with the atheist's ability to love and live morally is influenced by his own understanding of the source of moral truth. Because he defines the origin of pure love as Jesus' sacrifice on behalf of mankind, it is unfathomable to him that love could be found as a result of human survival/selection based of traits of cooperation, peace and mutual benefits of our social structure. His logic is therefore coloured and his mind is closed to certain ideas and possibilities.

The idea of agape love is a Christian idea, and agape love is unconditional love. You do not get agape love out of natural selection because it is sacrificial and sacrificing your well being or your life has a very negative impact on your chance to survive and pass on your genes. However, Christ provided the perfect example of agape love by sacrificing His life not only for His friends and family, but for people who hate and despise Him. In the natural sense, since Jesus failed to pass on His genes His traits should be selected out of the gene pool. Christ demonstrated a higher love that transcends the worldly idea of love. Often when the world speaks of love, it is speaking of eros love, which is love based on physical attraction, or philial love, which is brotherly love. The world knows very little of agape love outside of Christ. Christ taught agape love as the universal duty of men towards God:

Luke 6:27 "But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
Luke 6:28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
Luke 6:29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.
Luke 6:30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.
Luke 6:31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
Luke 6:32 "If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
Luke 6:33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.
Luke 6:34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount.
Luke 6:35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.
Luke 6:36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Indeed, moral foundations can and must change with the times. As our understanding of empathy, personal freedoms and the greater good of mankind develops with our societal and cultural evolution, so too must our standards of morality. This is most evident when concepts such as slavery and revenge (an eye for an eye) are seen as commonplace and acceptable throughout old scripture where modern society has evolved a greater understanding of the need for equality and basic human rights and policing and corrections as a measure of deterrence and rehabilitation for those individuals that stray from the path of greatest utility.

This is why slavery is no more, why racism is in decline and why eventually gay rights and green thought will be universal and our struggle to stifle the rights of gays and exploit the planet's resources to the point of our own self-extinction simply will be seen by future historians as sheer ignorance. Leviticus still pops up when people try to brand gays as deviant, even though most it is itself incoherent by today's standards. Remember that "defecating within the camp was unacceptable lest God step in it while walking in the evening." Well, today we just call that sewage management.

Some people, like Richard Dawkins, see infanticide as being the greatest utility. Some believe that to save the planet around 70 percent of the population must be exterminated. Green thought is to value the health of the planet above individual lives; to basically say that human lives are expendable to preserve the collective. This is why abortion is not questionable to many who hold these ideals; because human life isn't that valuable to them. I see many who have green thoughts contrast human beings to cattle or cockroaches. Utility is an insufficient moral standard because it is in the eye of the beholder.

In regards to the Levitical laws, those were given to the Jews and not the world, and for that time and place. God made a covenant with the Jewish people which they agreed to follow. The covenant God made with the world through Christ is different than the Mosaic law, and it makes those older laws irrelevant. If you would like to understand why God would give laws regarding slavery, or homosexuality, I can elucidate further.

In regards to your paraphrasing of Deuteronomy 23:13-14, this is really a classic example of how the scripture can be made to look like it is saying one thing, when it is actually saying something completely different. Did you read this scripture? It does not say that:

Deuteronomy 23:13 And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement.

Deuteronomy 23:14 Because the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.

Gods home on Earth was in the tabernacle, and because God dwelled with His people, He exorted them to keep the camp holy out of reverence for Him.

The rules that God gave for cleanliness were 2500 years ahead of their time:

"In the Bible greater stress was placed upon prevention of disease than was given to the treatment of bodily ailments, and in this no race of people, before or since, has left us such a wealth of LAWS RELATIVE TO HYGIENE AND SANITATION as the Hebrews. These important laws, coming down through the ages, are still used to a marked degree in every country in the world sufficiently enlightened to observe them. One has but to read the book of Leviticus carefully and thoughtfully to conclude that the admonitions of Moses contained therein are, in fact, the groundwork of most of today's sanitary laws. As one closes the book, he must, regardless of his spiritual leanings, feel that the wisdom therein expressed regarding the rules to protect health are superior to any which then existed in the world and that to this day they have been little improved upon" (Magic, Myth and Medicine, Atkinson, p. 20). Dr. D. T. Atkinson

What's interesting about that is that Moses was trained in the knowledge of the Egyptians, the most advanced civilization in the world at that time. Yet you will not find even a shred of it in the bible. Their understanding of medicine at that time led to them doing things like rubbing feces into wounds; ie, it was completely primitive in comparison to the commands that God gave to Moses about cleanliness. Moses didn't know about germs but God did.

Paedophilia will never emerge as acceptable because it violates our basic understanding of human rights and the acceptable age of sexual consent. I know this is a common warning about the "slippery slope of a Godless definition of morality," but it's really a red herring. Do you honestly think society would someday deem that it carries a benefit to society? I just can't see it happening.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_Ancient_Greece

I hear you shinyblurry, but I feel that your argument meanders back to the original appeal to authority that most believers resort to when justifying their positions. I also find that the related video links provided by TheGenk provide a valid refutation of the idea that God is The One who put values of good and evil inside each of us.

In my mind, Zacharias' incoherence with the atheist's ability to love and live morally is influenced by his own understanding of the source of moral truth. Because he defines the origin of pure love as Jesus' sacrifice on behalf of mankind, it is unfathomable to him that love could be found as a result of human survival/selection based of traits of cooperation, peace and mutual benefits of our social structure. His logic is therefore coloured and his mind is closed to certain ideas and possibilities.

Indeed, moral foundations can and must change with the times. As our understanding of empathy, personal freedoms and the greater good of mankind develops with our societal and cultural evolution, so too must our standards of morality. This is most evident when concepts such as slavery and revenge (an eye for an eye) are seen as commonplace and acceptable throughout old scripture where modern society has evolved a greater understanding of the need for equality and basic human rights and policing and corrections as a measure of deterrence and rehabilitation for those individuals that stray from the path of greatest utility.

This is why slavery is no more, why racism is in decline and why eventually gay rights and green thought will be universal and our struggle to stifle the rights of gays and exploit the planet's resources to the point of our own self-extinction simply will be seen by future historians as sheer ignorance. Leviticus still pops up when people try to brand gays as deviant, even though most it is itself incoherent by today's standards. Remember that "defecating within the camp was unacceptable lest God step in it while walking in the evening." Well, today we just call that sewage management.

Paedophilia will never emerge as acceptable because it violates our basic understanding of human rights and the acceptable age of sexual consent. I know this is a common warning about the "slippery slope of a Godless definition of morality," but it's really a red herring. Do you honestly think society would someday deem that it carries a benefit to society? I just can't see it happening.

I'm no fan of atheism+ and that in spite of the fact that I do support most of their claimed causes. I just don't like the censorship and banning, the very conflation of religion with social causes that we've been fighting against for years, or the 'with us or against us' attitude I find when I look to see what all of the fuss is. noelplum99 (among others) has a sourced and detailed playlist of vids explaining his objections, long but it covers a lot of ground. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl8YBXeamXSI4rnZraJTu3RDXnkImNwD7

Rather than a double post I'll reply to the statement by VoodooV above here as well. VoodooV says...

"This video is confusing, it doesn't really introduce itself or the problem very well."

I'm not subscribed to anyone directly involved in the fights so don't really have a horse in the race and haven't followed every detail. But in a nutshell... many months back at a conference a woman in an elevator was made uncomfortable by a man, man turned out to be Richard Dawkins. People took sides and much drama ensued.

Freethought blogs took on Thunderf00t as a writer and he expressed opinions which pissed off some of the others at the blog. More people took sides, more drama ensued and Thunderf00t was asked to leave.

And in the middle of this those who took the more (to them at least) 'feminist' view decided to start a new group, atheist+, even they seem to admit these days that the launch of the idea was ham handed and more confrontational than it needed to be and according to them it's all just a misunderstanding. According to their critics it's understood just fine, the critics just don't agree. Yet more people took sides and yet more drama ensued. And here we are.

My favorite comment on the whole mess was probably a post by TheMudbrooker at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLMy6zBft4s Can't say that I agree with every word of it but the end at least seems on point for my view. If they need a group to tell them what to do, a social structure, go back to church where they belong and leave the rest of us alone. It's hard enough as it is to get people to understand that atheist mean "not theist" and nothing more without these people confusing the issue. Regardless of any other opinions anyone might have about them for other reasons. I don't approve of mixing religion and politics and it's no more defensible to mix a lack of religion with politics. Separate debates even if they are both worthy on their own merits. It's not helpful.

>> ^hpqp:

Oh please, this is just bad science. It's barely even worth cheap sci-fi. Where do you get the energy to run the replicator, eh? Does entropy ring a bell? Even without replicators humans are draining the earth of it's energetic resources (including the "sustainable" ones)...
Nice philosophical mindgame, like all utopias for that matter, but nowhere near hard science.
philosophy


Our world is full of achievements that were once beyond the ability of hard science.
How can humans possibly communicate over hundrends of miles? We're already yelling as loud as we can.
How can we possibly run faster than cheetahs? Our legs can't move any faster!
How can I kill Og standing all the way over there? Rock not throw farther!!!

Ultimately, all life shares one common goal; the quest for energy. From single cell creatures harvesting light, heat or chemical reactions to survive...all the way to modern humans with their agriculture, technology and complex social structures; the journey of evolution has been the race for more efficient means of acquiring and managing energy.
Our economies are elaborate means of trading energy.
Our societies organized to maximize the collection of energy.
Our governments created to ensure equitable distribution or energy.

The result of millenia of advancement is that we now expend much less energy to acquire a larger return of energy. And all that excess energy creates the complex world we live in.

But there is the potential, in the future, for technological advancements in science that will create a massive paradigm shift. There is the potential for accessible energy to become inexhaustable. And when the cost, in terms of human effort, of energy approaches Zero....everything changes.

Will the end of human need result in a utopia?
LOL...never. Because we'll always have griefers.

The problem is also that we as humans believe in a moral code that doesn't conform to natural law. With our moral code, only good people should get sick or hurt. People who work hard, regardless of who their parents are, etc., should have an equal chance of success. Etc.

But natural law and the social structures we institute don't enforce moral law, and often fly in the face of it. People don't need welfare just because they're lazy. They often need it because the system did screw them even though they did what they were supposed to.

I was on unemployment for three months back in 2004. Why? I was a public school teacher, and my wife got sick. We couldn't pay the medical bills and went into massive debt. So I busted by butt getting into IT for a few years while refusing to let my quality of work as a teacher suffer. After a few years of getting certifications and side work on top of teaching, in 2004 I got my first full time IT job at Microsoft Premier Product Support for Exchange. After being there for 2.5 months, MS axed every contractor support professional in that call center as they outsourced many of these support jobs overseas. I don't see how that's karma to me. I had no savings because I was in debt paying for medical bills for my wife, who certainly didn't deserve the medical problems she had.

This kind of thing happens frequently. To ignore that the system we've fashioned, or natural law for that matter, flies in the face of our moral code, is a selective view of reality. No one could possibly deserve being born with a genetic disorder - they hadn't done anything yet to deserve it!

That's the problem I have with honestly both harcore liberals and conservatives - neither side is right 100% of the time, so being ideologically rigid is insane. People do game for example welfare; others truly need more assistance than welfare currently provides, too. The answer isn't to infinitely expand welfare benefits nor to abolish it completely. We should improve on it. Same for other similar programs. The sooner people would accept that, the sooner we can actually accomplish something instead of having insane conversations that lead nowhere.

>> ^quantumushroom:

JONATHAN HAIDT: So karma, karma's a Sanskrit word, for, literally for work, or fruit. That is, if you do some work, you should get the fruit of it. If I help you, I will eventually get the fruit of it. Even if you don't help me, something will happen. It's just a law of the universe. So, Hindus traditionally believed it's, that the universe will balance itself, right itself. It's like gravity. If I am lazy, good-for-nothing lying scoundrel, the universe will right that and I will suffer. But then along comes liberal do-gooders and the federal government to bail them out.
So I think the conservative view, for social conservatives this is, is that basically liberals are trying to revoke the law of karma. Almost as though, imagine somebody trying to revoke the law of gravity, and everything's going to float away into chaos.